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Comment by labster | Hacker News Reader

And for 300 years, Oxford University shared the planet with the Roman Empire.

It's slightly misleading to the reader to refer to the Byzantine Empire as the Roman Empire. Sure, the people living there considered themselves Romans, but they also referred to their country as Romania, which also today is not typically used to refer to the Byzantine Empire without giving further context.

Well, if you mean Byzantine Empire (East Roman Empire with the Constantinople as a capitol) then absolutely massive amount of things shared it's time with it because it has fallen in 1453, even Columbus shared the planet with it.

But at this point, maybe incorrectly but surely, 'Roman Empire' is synonymous with antiquity so the republic and early empire, I think that even if year 495 counts here then it's borderline

As a Jewish Israeli, reading this thread is eye-opening. What many people here consider the real Roman Empire rose _after_ the fall of my ancestors. And that Roman Empire is considered ancient? We view our ancestors from that time period as contemporary as we view our present day politicians.

Sometimes is it very good to see the perspective of others. Thank you.

Go far enough and you and me share the same ancestor. I think there was a post that statistically you don't need to go that far (just a few millenia)

We need an Assyrian to chime in here...

As a Purepecha Mexican I find it very eye-opening the other way around. Very weird to see people consider our empires ancient, we are very aware we are the new kids on the block. As an aside, I have always found it interesting when people talk about the Mayans as some mythical lost thing, have had a few beers with them, good people, but not mythical by any stretch.

What does contemporary mean in this context? i.e. what's not considered 'contemporary'

I mean that we don't consider them "long gone". Their teachings are as relevant today as they were at the time of their lives.

We consider Adam, Noah ancient. But the Romans? Might as well have been last week.

Well I would consider Adam and Noah to be mythologial rather than ancient.

Even Moses, who might have lived around the 13th century bc would have been 1000 years after Sargon of Akkad.

There is a lot of history to go around, so many peoples and civilisations that we know of, and so many that we do not.

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